Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Ten Sentences

This is a bit of a crazy week for
me. My older daughter is away in California with her grandparents and my
younger daughter is taking full advantage of her “only child status.” Which
means that I’m running around entertaining her and making her feel special—I don’t
mind, but it doesn’t leave me a lot of time to myself. And therefore, things
like blogs suffer. So, with apologies, I’m taking the easy way out and showing
off 10 sentences from my latest manuscript, The
Seduction of Esther. It’s a contemporary Jewish romance that takes place around
the holiday of Purim (a holiday that celebrates the saving of the Jews of
Persia by Queen Esther, herself a Jew). One of the themes of Purim is hiding
one’s identity (Esther didn’t actually tell her husband she was Jewish until
she revealed the plot against the Jews), and that’s a great theme for a
romance. These sentences show when the heroine meets the hero. The manuscript
is currently out looking for an agent—wish me luck and let me know what you
think!

Her goal—the potatoes; the
multitude of delicious sights and smells distracted her and she squeezed and
smelled her way through the narrow aisles toward the back of the store.

“Whoa!”

Samara whipped her head up as a
deep voice interrupted her thoughts of baked potatoes au gratin. A tanned hand reached for her arm, its
fingers long and square with clean nails. They pressed against her arm, just firm enough
for her to feel their warmth. Her gaze traveled up his arm, from the wrist. A light
dusting of dark hair peeked from beneath the cuff of a starched, white shirt.
Her eyes continued their way up to the biceps that filled out the sleeve. She
continued across the broad expanse of chest, up a tanned throat, over a
chiseled chin darkened by five o’clock shadow, past soft lips, around flared
nostrils and into blue eyes. Slate-blue eyes twinkled at her.